Microsoft stack expert cannot choose between GAE or Microsoft stack

Question

I create a site with a friend to try to make some money. Basically, we want users to collect data from different social media APIs (FaceBook, Twitter, etc.) and do some interesting things with the data.

My development friend is sold on Google App Engine because at first it costs nothing, and then you pay as traffic / data increases. I am torn. I like to be able to load the business this way, and I have no startup costs (other than time), but I'm worried about exploring a whole new "world of programming," as Joel Spolsky put it.

I like C #, ASP.NET MVC and SQL Server so much, which, it seems to me, go to something like Java or Python on top of BigTable, and will ultimately take about 3 times longer (if not more).

Can someone give me some guidance on this? Basically, I am wondering if there is a way I can have the following: Microsoft stack :

• Free hosting up to a certain traffic limit
• The ability to scale at a price similar to that offered by Google using GAE (perhaps the hosting service will need support for a good scalable storage solution), for example, Couch DB?)

For # 1, I am fine if it means that it places it on my own server for the ALPHA / BETA phases. For # 2, I hope that there is a good hosting service out there that can put me on shared hosting servers and charge for traffic. Does it exist? Thanks!

Answer 1

I am also a .NET expert, but I used Python-AppEngine for hobbies / business purposes because it allows you to download a new web application without initial cost. This is very important for me, because I do not have a budget for third-party projects at all, and so far, with many AppEngine applications, I have not spent a dime on it.

Learning a new language may seem like a drag and drop at first, but I came to the conclusion that my new experience in Python is invaluable. Remember that the best and most suitable developers are usually generalizing with a wide and flexible palette of skills. My resume has C # and .NET, as well as Python and Ruby / Ruby on Rails, and I received a very positive reaction from potential clients and employers.

Learning Python was unsuccessful. Getting the WebOb and Django template descriptor took a lot of effort, but nothing extraordinary. Over time, I created my own frame layer on top of those things that included the best ideas from Rails and ASP.NET MVC that I skipped. You can take a look at it on Google Code , and you will see a number of ideas specially borrowed from ASP.NET MVC.

Answer 2

Unfortunately, when it comes to a similar platform, you will not find a version of MS Stack. Windows Azure is coming, but it's more like Amazon EC2.

The python stack in GAE is really easy to use, and it was able to make the transition pretty quickly. Django is an MVC that is really popular and fairly easy to use. It also gives an ORM to write to BigTable, which means you really don't need to care about that.

The Java implementation is very similar, and you can use really well-known MVC frameworks to build your application like Spring